DBizTV / Member

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25 15 16

In Defense of Editors, Workers And Builders

I have read with great interest the comments made recently by many all over the site : in blogs, pm's, forums - the disquieting disappointment seems to be rampant and widespread. I have heard lowly newbies, mid-level climbers and high-rollers who have poured their hearts and souls into making this a great place for TV lovers to come and visit and be with friends - all share a love of the site and a desire to see it succeed. But there appear to be those who don't listen to the wind, those who "know" by some mysterious process of magical divination what is "best" for the rest of us, those that are above the work that we, the workers, do and the genuinely wise experience gained by senior editors who have made tens of thousands of submissions, written hundreds of thousands of words and spent countless hours working for our benefit.

Both the new show page and episode pages are now dysfunctional atrocities. And, admittedly it's a small thing, but just why was it necessary for the editors to lose their crowns? Unlike staff, they don't get paid. Was it that necessary, that important to take away the one thing they get for all their hard work and sacrifice - and just who was it necessary for and important to?

The elegant, functional and informative Episode Overview we had has been replaced by a sterile field of white and a sea of ads and listings which confuse the eye and have nothing to do with the episode itself. Cast, Crew, Notes, Trivia, and Allusions are now gone from sight and lost to easy access. Those listings, along the information they contained and the links embedded in them, served both the casual visitor and the working editor by being 'up front and personal,' not buried in multiple back pages. And what was the point of adding even more links if the new design was only going to hide them anyway? Why have the Episode Lists and Guides apparently lost the ability to display both show total and seasonal episode numbers, information which can be critical to working editors? Certainly, it must be said that the original bevy of flaws was much larger, and thankfully, several early mistakes have been rectified; but one wonders why this "new look", if necessary, wasn't better designed in the first place?

Anyone who's read my posts before knows that I prefer to be positive and abhor being rude or critical, but I'm getting there. Why should my job, and the jobs of all editors, be tougher to do because of decisions neither they, nor apparently even the site MODS, had any input on? Do the people who made these absurd decisions actually have show guides of their own to work? Perhaps that's the real problem here. Every single change effecting work and process should first be run by a committee of senior, experienced editors who are still actively working shows - the people who have been devoted to this site since its bloody inception. Please, enough already with the stylistic dilettantes and their sterile, counter-intuitive nonsense ...